The Mac and the iPhone have kept the money-making machine that is Apple well-oiled throughout the third fiscal quarter. Apple raked in a cool $1.23 billion in profit, thanks to Mac and iPhone sales exceeding expectations.

Apple’s third fiscal quarter (second calendar quarter) ended June 27, 2009 and files as the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in the Mac maker’s history. The company reported $8.34 billion in revenues, up from $7.46 billion in the year-ago quarter, ($880 million difference), and up from $8.16 billion filed for the previous quarter ($180 million difference). This compares with a 8.20 billion consensus and analysts’ estimates falling in the $8.4-$8.5 billion range.

The company shipped 2.6 million Macs during the quarter, a four percent unit increase over 2.5 million Mac units moved in the year-ago quarter. The figure also tops the 2.22 million Macs sold in the quarter-ago period. Apple moved 5.2 million iPhone units, representing a 626 percent unit growth over the 717,000 iPhone units shipped in the year-ago quarter. The iPod sold 10.2 million units, a seven percent unit decline from 11 million iPod units shipped in the year-ago quarter. Steve Jobs highlighted stellar iPhone sales by saying the following:

“We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding. We’re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year.”

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief of finance said that Apple’s quarterly metrics reveal a “record non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings,” stressing that quarterly cash flow from operations topped out at a whopping $2.3 billion. The company’s guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009 calls for revenues in the range of about $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion and diluted earnings per share in the range of about $1.18 to $1.23.

Christian’s opinion:

It’s evident that iPhones sold extremely well, exceeding the 4 million consensus by 1.2 million units. The figure is even more significant if you know that the new iPhone 3GS has been on sale for just two weeks in the third quarter, meaning that people were buying iPhone 3G regardless of the fact that everyone knew a better model would be coming. That’s in sharp contrast to the last year when people stopped buying first-gen iPhones in anticipation of the iPhone 3G launch. That’s why Apple sold just 717,000 first-gen iPhones during the year ago quarter and that’s also why current iPhone sales represent a huge 626 percent annual uptick.

When it comes to Macs, Apple benefited from consumer and portable Macs refreshed with the latest chips and Nvidia GPUs that the company unveiled late in the first fiscal quarter. Recent hardware updates to Mac portables and price drops didn’t hurt either. If Apple continues bumping hardware specs while shaving prices, combined with the OS X Snow Leopard launch in September, Macs will steal even more market share from Windows systems.

Although iPod sales upped the 9.5 million units consensus by 700,000 units, this still doesn’t change the fact that the music player is bleeding, with unit sales dropping 7 percent both sequentially and annually. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. The current iPod family is over nine months old, and that’s a lot in an iPod world. If we exclude the new iPod shuffle unveiled early March, all other iPod models are due for a September or October overhaul, including the iPod touch that will need more than new chips found in iPhone 3GS to shrug off Microsoft’s upcoming Zune HD.